How I made this:
Two years ago I was asked to make a family portrait as a birthday present for a guy’s father. He wanted the family put in an oldschool Belgian/Dutch style painting, so I made some Photoshop designs using the works of Rubens and the like.
We finally settled on using Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait:
I changed the faces, replaced the dog with their cat, added the guy and his brother in what used to be the mirror on the backwall and, of course, changed van Eyck’s signature above it in the final result.
Then I have to decide the order in which I’m going to build up the project, separate the different items, print them (on A4 in black and white) in true size using some poster-printing software, glue the pages together and then a full month of cutting began:
[I will make another post of my stencil-cutting process, as it’s not that easily explained after adding more and more tricks in all these years of doing it.]
The brothers in the 'mirror':
If there's a lot of the same color I try to keep 1 page/1 color. When it’s a lot of small amounts of different ones I need to make notes on the stencils:
I spent a crazy amount of time on the details, sometimes cutting as small as 1 on 1 millimeter (that’s 0.039 inches). I can’t help but do it when I see the result would be better.. And I think it separates me from other stencil artists who mostly do quick-and-easy 3 or 4 layer stencils. But of course it gets me in a situation where I spent a full week cutting out things like this dress:
These are all the stencils I cut out, I don't remember how many, but it was a lot..:
Then, after getting a good quality canvas (this one was 100 x 150 cm (+/- 39 x 59 inches)) and all the right colors (I think it was around 35 different ones) the painting process could begin.
It’s always good to start with the background with stencils (when spraying), as the edges don’t matter much during the cutting because something is going on top of it anyway.
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Fixing some minor faults with a good-old-fashion' paintbrush:
Using different kinds of weights, old coins/pieces of wood/... to keep the stencils flat on the canvas:
About half-way there:
Some stencils after spraying:
As van Eyck wasn’t around (‘fuit hic’ = ‘was here’) or helped me, being all dead and lazy, I changed his name for mine:
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After 4 or 5 days of spraying it was finally done:
The father was really happy with his birthday present, they are fervent art collectors so it was certainly an opinion to value. As this was a unique commissioned piece I haven’t got much use for the cut-out stencils anymore, for other works I store them so I can always make a copy or make other versions in different colors..
Hope you enjoyed it!
More to come. .😉
[www.stencilart.be]
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STOPThis truly is a WORK of art! I enjoyed reading it because I could relate to the tedious cutting LOL. I am tired of skeptical people telling me stencil art is not a real art because I am just cutting a reference image....duh...I should just get them to read your post. Thank you for sharing this. I am looking forward to reading more of your process.
Thank you very much! Sure unless you are drawing 100% from imagination there is always a 'reference image' be it a model or a picture of the model..